The Future of Health is Collaborative
Musings on the 2019 HLTH Conference from Dr. Ivor Horn
I’ve been to Las Vegas twice. Both times to attend the HLTH (pronounced “health”) conference — a new powerful event series aimed at building the future of health. Though I walked away exhausted from the walking, networking and constant cha-chinging of the slot machines, I was cautiously inspired.
And just to frame up the event a bit more, here is a deeper dive on the mission:
[HLTH is] an unprecedented, large-scale forum for collaboration across senior leaders from established payers, providers, employers, and pharma services, as well as from disruptive startups, prolific investors, representatives from government, academia, health associations, business groups, media, and industry analysts. The event is unique in creating a marketplace for the key stakeholders leading the dialogue and development of a new health ecosystem. HLTH’s mission is to be a catalyst to drive substantial reductions in health costs and dramatic increases in health quality.
Now that I’ve set the scope for what this event is all about, let’s dive into what I learned from it the second time around. Note: I was only there from Sunday until Tuesday morning but it felt a lot longer.
The HLTH team listens to feedback — I will give the HLTH conference team credit. They listened. Gone were the ubiquitous manels (yep, all-male panels)of 2018. I left before the Women at HLTH session on Wednesday but all indications from social media suggest it achieved its goal. As with most things, when you raise the bar, the expectation for next time is to go even higher.
Everybody is talking about the Social Determinants of Health. The team at Patchwise Labs provided a great summary of the sessions on SDOH here — so I will just add one additional reflection. It is clear that the nuances of SDOH and the intersectionality with institutional racism and bias remain taboo topics, except a brave few, at this meeting. I get it. It’s BIG and too much for any company, organization, or industry to solve. But it’s the elephant in the room. If I just stuck to the talks I heard, we could solve SDOH with a link to food, transportation and housing services. Oh yeah, I forgot solving the problem of loneliness. To “checkbox” these challenges without acknowledging the impact of racism and bias, and resulting lack of trust in health care in communities experiencing the worse health disparities risks making things worse. So how do we begin? First, let’s include more voices from the community members most impacted by SDOH in the meeting to make sure all perspectives are heard. Second, we need to find ways to include economic sustainability for community service providers who have been building trust long before we ever heard of SDOH, so we are raising the fortunes of all boats as we look to address these complex issues.
The value of introducing people who don’t know each other. Expand your network. — Unlike the pediatrics meetings that I usually attend, there were so many people at HLTH that I didn’t know and it was fun meeting new people. So many strangers engaged in conversations with me during the meeting. Thank you for inviting me into your circles. It was great. This meeting is built for networking. AND, we can do better. Invite more people of color to the meeting. Please include more patients — especially from underserved (underestimated) communities. I know we are all patients and caregivers, but we have to acknowledge that everyone’s lived experiences with healthcare are not the same. Diversify your invite lists — for dinners and small “invite-only” sessions.
Separate marketing and announcements from discussions focused on moving knowledge forward. Last year felt like one marketing pitch after another with a few announcements thrown in for good measure. While it wasn’t perfect, we had a few more substantive conversations in 2019. You are maturing as a conference. Keep going. I believe in you! That said — Where are the contrarians? Where are we missing the mark in health innovation? Let’s talk about it.
The best parts — connecting with old friends, meeting new people and expanding my tribe. People who were practically strangers became friends and future collaborators.
My action item from the meeting — to build bridges. 2020 is all about making connections and connecting others. If you’re feeling the vibe, hit me up! Find me on Twitter as @DrIvorHorn
Dr. Ivor Braden Horn has 20+ years of experience as a physician executive in health system, academic and venture-backed entrepreneurial environments. As Chief Medical Officer at Accolade, Dr. Horn drove the transformation of clinical strategy and the development of a new clinical analytics function to create more effective patient engagement and care management. As a strategic leader, Ivor has demonstrated expertise in driving organizational transformation in integration of technology and product innovation, implementation of equity, diversity and inclusion efforts to drive quality improvement and engagement with key stakeholders to improve health outcomes. Dr. Horn is on the advisory board at Onboard Health.
